Germany

Right, so I'm back from Korea and have been for about a month now. I've been doing a lot of nothing in particular between then and now, although I have accumulated an excess of dirt under my fingernails from the aggressive way I've thrown myself into gardening.

Besides the point. My headline reads Germany and as arbitrary as that sounds at this point in the post, it surely will reveal itself in future sentences.

I'm moving to Germany!

I've been looking very much into the position of "Au Pair" (or "nanny" for the lazy tongue) through a self pairing website called www.Greataupair.com. Where most other websites will charge you a placement fee, Great AuPair will allow you to create a profile and browse families at no cost, just minus a few "membership" benefits. Despite not having immediate access to contact information which a rather pricey membership provides, it is still very possible to find a family and vice versa, as long as one party is a member. I've come to realize that these families who can afford private live-in child care are also people who consider the $60 fee mere pocket change.

Within days I had families emailing me as well as families who never wrote me back. No harm done as I had accumulated over 80 potential families on my "hot list," which is a feature that allows you to bookmark the households that you are interested in. They will instantly receive notification of being put on your hot list and they can chose to accept or decline your interest with the click of a thumbs up or a thumbs down button. This pass or fail method is also available to the Au Pair to accept or decline a family's interest in them. It sounds brutal, but it's actually more fun than facebook.

So after a week of spamming my good qualities to interested families, I finally found an ideal match with a couple in Germany. They are located in a quaint old countryside surrounded with orchards, vineyards and old German architecture with a 4 year old boy, 1 year old girl and a hound dog. Sheiza.

Mandatory for a working visa in Germany is that I take regular German language courses. This is great because that swear word up above there is 50% of my German language knowledge. Thank Heidi Klum for the other half.

And so begins my journey, two weeks from now starts my one year commitment to Deutschland. Snow, rhubarb, sauerkraut, Nazis, Mercedes-Benz, blond hair, blue eyes, Oktoberfest, Dachshunds, Monocles and Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier which is German beer. Lots and lots of Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier.